At present, elevator guiding systems mainly adopt rigid guide rails. As the rigid guide rail has errors during design, manufacture and installation, and shaft wall of the mine bears huge pressure and is deformed, lateral inclination, bending deformation, joint dislocation and local projection of the guide rail happen frequently. Consequently, the elevator car shakes violently during elevating. In serious cases, the elevator sliding guide shoes or the rolling guide wheel relying on the low-clearance guide rail are stuck and subsequently the elevator car is stuck in the shaft. It is a great hidden danger to the safe operation of the mining elevator and threatens the life and safety of the passengers in the elevator car.
In the current mine shafts, flexible guide rails of steel rope guides have been used, which are mostly a steel rope guide system based on tightening by heavy hammer in bottom hole, a steel rope guide system tightening by a hydraulic screw and a hydraulic tensioner based on a high-speed clip. Among them, the advantage of the steel rope guide system based on tightening by heavy hammer in bottom hole is a stable tightening force, but the heavier the goods in the elevating container is, the greater the mass of the heavy hammer for tightening will be and the larger the occupied space will be needed. Therefore, a deeper shaft sump needs to be dug. If coal briquettes or other sundries fall into the shaft sump and raise the level of sump bottom, i.e., the tightening force of the heavy hammer is decreased, resulting in serious lateral deflection of the elevator car. What is more, low work efficiency, high labor intensity and the accurate weight of the heavy hammer is difficult to be adjusted. The steel rope guide system tightening by a hydraulic screw overcomes many shortcomings of the tightening by heavy hammer, but the processing of the wedge device is difficult and it is not easy to have the wedge enter the bottom of the fixing device. As a result, the slipping between the steel rope and the wedge happens, resulting in fall of the steel rope of the guide from the top. The hydraulic tensioner based on a high-speed clip overcomes the drawbacks of the heavy hammer type and the screw type hydraulic tightening systems, but in case that the tightening force of the steel rope decreases due to permanent continuous tension, the steel rope is unable to realize automatic tensioning. To tension it, the steel rope clamp plate must be loosened manually. If the stroke of the cylinder is not long enough, the required tension cannot be achieved unless the steel rope is tensioned again, resulting in low efficiency of the lifting system.
According to the above analysis, it can be known that the current rigid guide rails for mining elevators cannot meet the requirement of normal lifting and there is not a steel rope guide system for mining elevator; the tightening heavy hammer in a steel rope guide system based on tightening by heavy hammer in bottom hole has large mass, occupies a large space, and the weight can not be adjusted easily; processing of the wedges of the steel rope guide system based on tightening by a hydraulic screw is difficult, and it is easy to cause the slipping between the steel rope and the wedge; the hydraulic tensioner based on a high-speed clip cannot be automatically adjusted and is inefficient.